Dear Folks, This is the prelude to my narrative about our trip from Spokane, WA, to Memphis, TN. It has to do with Route 66. vee ROUTE 66 January 25, 2004 This afternoon I was making plans to transcribe my Trip Journal that I kept in February 1952 when we moved from Spokane, Washington, to Memphis, Tennessee. I read my brief notes and studied the pictures we had taken en route and the trip all came back to me. It dawned on me that we had traveled almost 1,300 miles on the old Route 66 from Barstow, California, to Oklahoma City, on our trip eastward. It's the history of Route 66 that I want to talk about right now. Although I probably had heard the lyrics of the song "Get your Kicks on Route 66" that was written in 1946, I have an idea that the song didn't really catch on until the program "Route 66" was on TV from 1960 to 1964. Either way, I never learned the history of Route 66 until now as I searched about it on Google. Oh what a shame that none of knew its history at that time we were traveling it! It was built around 1926 as a route between Chicago and Los Angeles, through rural areas enabling farmers to transport their grain and produce for redistribution. In 1939 John Steinbeck wrote about the Great Depression years of the 1930s and the part that Route 66 played in his classic book, "The Grapes of Wrath." It has been estimated that during that time 210,000 people had migrated to California to escape the despair of the Dust Bowl. Route 66 wasn't continuously paved until 1938. >From the website http://www.national66.com/66hstry.html, this is what they say about the post WWII years. After the war, Americans were more mobile than ever before. Thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen who received military training in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas abandoned the harsh winters of Chicago, New York City, and Boston for the "barbecue culture" of the Southwest and the West. Again, for many, Route 66 facilitated their relocation. One such emigrant was Robert William Troup, Jr., of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Bobby Troup, former pianist with the Tommy Dorsey band and ex-Marine captain, penned a lyrical road map of the now famous cross-country road in which the words, "get your kicks on Route 66" became a catch phrase for countless motorists who moved back and forth between Chicago and the Pacific Coast. The popular recording was released in 1946 by Nat King Cole one week after Troup's arrival in Los Angeles. Note: please check out that URL for the remaining history of Route 66. Getting back to Bobby Troup's song, I'll quote the portion of it that applied to us on our trip of 1952. Note: of course we were traveling from west to east. And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty. You see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona. Don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino The old Route 66 is barely still there. It was replaced by Interstate Highway 40. Nonetheless, it's still there. However, the true ghost towns we traveled through (Oatman, Arizona, in particular) are now populated with tourist attractions complete with daily shootouts. If only I had known in 1952 what I know now over fifty years later, all of us would have been awed by our journey across that portion of Route 66. Nonetheless, back in 1952 we were really awed by it at the time. And trust me, we had gotten our kicks on Route 66! Give me some time to start writing about that eight-day journey and I'll share it with you.